Inclusive Govt restores investor confidence

In interview yesterday, the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) president Mr Joseph Kanyekanye said the coming of the inclusive Government had enhanced the country’s economic situation.“Generally, business has managed to procure peace after 11 years of decline in terms of growth in the economy. We fully support the inclusive Government and we believe it is the way forward because it has brought back business confidence,” he said.

Mr Kanyekanye said the political peace had positively contributed to the luring of foreign and domestic investors in the business sector.However, he said although the inclusive Government had done good to the economy, there was still a need for the political leaders in the country to close the remaining gaps that were a stumbling block to further economic development and to ensure that business confidence was fully realised.

“We hope in the political dimension our leaders will remove the existing impediments such as the issue of sanctions, so that we attract more investment into the economy. Some companies are retrenching because they are not competitive, they are not able to raise financial resources. There is need for us to try and secure lines of credit,” he said.Mr Kanyekanye said companies were struggling to export because of a shortage of lines of credits.Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce president Mr Trust Chikohora said the business sector had benefited immensely from the inclusive Government and the introduction of the multi-currency system.He said business confidence levels had increased.

“2008 has been the worst part of our history economically, hyperinflation had reached alarming levels and it was impossible to fix a price using the Zimbabwean dollar. The inclusive Government has improved business confidence, we are now able to plan and to budget going into the future,” he said.Mr Chikohora said before the inclusive Government capacity utilisation was below 10 percent and grew to about 35 percent by the end of 2009.“Capacity utilisation has remained relatively stagnant in 2010 because of the liquidity crunch in the economy,” he said.Mr Chikohora said although there were liquidity problems in the economy, improvement in the availability of almost all products on the market was evidence enough that the inclusive Government had yielded positive results for the economy.

He said there was a need to recapitalise business and secure foreign investment as well as lines of credit.“We call upon GPA to clear remaining outstanding issues so that we see a situation where we become able to compete at global level. We need support from institutions such as IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the World Bank,” said Mr Chikohora.He said there was a need for the country to take indigenisation in a manner competitive with other countries.The business organisations said they were optimistic that by next year there would be an increase in economic growth and urged political leaders to consolidate what they had achieved so far.